


Nihilism

by marlboroblued



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 10:04:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21336457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marlboroblued/pseuds/marlboroblued
Summary: Medea's searching for Gawain, who had been missing for days, and encounters Jason in Chaldea.
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: Sexism, slut-shaming, domestic violence, murder and idk it's just full of fucked up things.  
Additional: My portrayal of Jason here is more mythological inclined. I do not like how Fate/Grand Order made him into a joke. This is more so me using my Rider (Jason) so he is not the same as his canon counterpart. Included a lot of references from Euripides' Medea.

Of all people she could have encountered in the empty halls of Chaldea, it just had to be him. His face is familiar. She would know it in life, she would know it in death. The renowned Captain of the Argo, the eloquent leader of men. Most would argue about his disposition, claim him useless in the field and can contribute nothing when war ensues. Medea personally knows that this is untrue.  
  
She had seen first hand just how Jason, son of Aeson, led a fleet of men with his words.  
  
He was arrogant and self-indulgent, but which man was not? In the wooden grounds of the ship deck, he would glance at his men with an expression most calm and calculating. In his silence, his mind could procure several options which promised unrivaled victory. In impossible situations, he had saved the lives of most just by commanding. Ten men alone led by him could defeat thousands, but only if he was the mind behind their every action. She could see why a man like Jason was needed to preserve the future of humanity. If she had to admit a painful truth, it would be that between the both of them, he is less likely to put a taint in their pact with the provisional Master and put to waste the significant progress they have made by now.  
  
So when she met his eyes, his eyes that seemed to bore into her person just as fiercely, she could not help but feel as if she was being choked. From here, she would deny his hold upon her neck, though from ill fate of the world, it is undoubtedly permanent at this point.  
  
"What a sore mistake. In this realm where heroes are called forth, you know as well as I do you are the least suitable to be here," he spoke to her, breaking the long and winding silence between them in sheer seconds. Like before, he spoke to her menacingly, as if disgusted by not just her existence, but the fact that she has the mighty gall to breathe in his presence. "_Medea_."  
  
Broadened eyes were hidden under her hood. He had claimed exactly the truth which began to penetrate her mind.  
  
"You are not so heroic yourself," she barked back, instilling confidence in every word she had uttered as to announce that he did not terrify her, nor will she ever come to do such a thing. She was in her search for a certain man, and that man happened to not be Jason. No, that man will never be him again. For her hatred towards her former husband is incurable. Her endless love before had been unfortunately replaced with unending ferocity and excessive wrath.  
  
She would say more, but Jason's demeanor petrified her from doing so. A damning slavery it must be to be silenced in this manner, thoughts imprisoned and unable to be shared.  
  
"Compared to you?" he raised his brows and huffed with the same haughtiness he used to have. "I must be. You will make even demons themselves appear divine in the eyes of Gods."  
  
Her gloved fists tightened behind her back. She must not show it. He must not bear audience once again to her vexing state, for he will not let her live it down if he were to find out that even now his words hold weight.  
  
"What are you, if not a vile woman? In your loathing, you will burn everything and slaughter even your own children."  
  
Upon hearing this, Medea refused to be silenced further.  
  
_I did not kill them_, she begged herself to scream in retaliation for this disrespect, but even she, herself, is not sure if it would be true. She recalled the lack of warmth in the body of their children as she found them lifeless in the soils of Corinth. What occurred before it? Her life had been a blur in that moment. Every men and women she had killed were clear in her mind but this. She does not remember. She cannot plead herself to even out of desperation.  
  
Why would she? It was not what happened. Medea did not kill her children. She was the first to find their corpses, yes, but the bastardization of her tale had installed upon her Spirit Origin to claim responsibility for an act she did not commit. It was the Corinthians who feared her and her actions. Jason will not believe her even if she is aware of this, so her lack of knowledge in this lie does not and will not change anything.  
  
"Who are you to speak this way to me? I became this way because I had loved you with all of my soul! You had taken me away from my home and only it was I who suffered the consequences of worshiping your name! You claim that the Goddess Aphrodite had installed upon me this foolishness, driven me to this state. You are wrong! Aphrodite could not be any more mistaken! I had loved you for I had seen you as a man greater than your accomplishments and ambitions! T'was why I had been so willing to be of use to you! Yet you discarded me like a harlot you were already done pleasuring yourself with! There is no justice to speak here, Jason. You are but a naive soul in the throes of love!"  
  
The tone of her voice kept on rising. Each remark from Jason a cruel punishment. He felt the same. Medea had never failed in leaving his heart most scorched. Like mad mutts they exchanged demeaning sentences.  
  
"What do you know about love, Medea? WHAT DO YOU KNOW? You would kill a man in his sleep if he had done so much as to unknowingly peeve you. The fair Aphrodite might have cursed you to be enamored by me, but she had not cursed you to become a slaughterer! Each action done by you is a result of your pampered lineage! Do not speak to me about love. You are a woman who had cut your kin to pieces and dress up such a vile act as assistance. I had brought you in Helias, guaranteed your fame in the same way I had earned mine. You think the world would know of you had you not met me? You will not be even a dent in history otherwise, and how did you repay me? By trampling over the meaning of our quest! It is by you that we had obtained the Golden Fleece, but it is also by you that I had been unable to claim the throne that quest was devoted for!"  
  
She found herself trembling. Quite perturbed. Not frightened, but vulnerable.  
As if each venom in Jason's tongue threatened to dismantle the woman within her all over again.  
  
"I had loved you, truthfully."  
  
Liar.  
Nothing but falseness in his words.  
Because he lied so often that he is no longer a man to be trusted even in his genuine honesty.  
  
"And I needed not a Goddess' curse to prove that. In your slaying of Pelias, I had lost all right to reclaim the Iolcus throne, and had earned the ire and disrespect of the Argonauts. You never heard a word from me in spite of it all! I ran away with you, loved you still as I had promised, treated like a foreigner in my own homeland with no home to call mine. Marrying another woman is so small of a betrayal compared to what you had taken from me!"  
  
Her mind should not stop to reminisce how he placed his lips against hers on the ship's deck. How he had lain with her most nights with anxiousness shored away from his face, eyes gleaming with nothing but fervent love. The vows he announced to the Gods, how proud and victorious he looked when he loudly named her his wife. She must not remember this. She must not even look at it. She cannot take it.  
  
"...the oaths you swore..."  
  
With labored breathing, it was all Medea could reply.  
  
"My oaths?" Jason scoffed, disgusted upon hearing this. "Yes, I had sworn to love you until we are of old age. But see, Medea, it was my mouth that swore, not my soul."  
  
No.  
She will not hear more of this.  
No more.  
Her mind will break again.  
  
Upon meeting Sir Gawain, she had promised herself she will not return to her menacing ways.  
She will bid goodbye to the woman she became and died as.  
Jason... Jason will never take this away from her.  
  
So she turned her back with unwavering pride, no longer bothered by the words of an old ghost. She understood that he did not desire to be with her until the end. Why, he was an aging man, with beard and hair as thick as the wall he had placed between them. It was no longer suitable to remain married to a woman who was beginning to appear in the eyes of the mass as more so his child than his beloved wife in comparison.  
  
She must let go.  
She must not let the past define her present.  
She must only be happy now, with someone else's devotion towards her.  
She must only think of the people who love and adore her.  
  
She cannot help it.   
Her wrathful self will not allow her to leave his sight without a venom matching his own.   
So with her remained uninhibited, once again, she bit agonizingly into his heart.  
  
"Go home to your wife and bury her."  
  
Then, what occurred from here should have been expected, and yet she found herself utterly at lost for words and reactions to give. She held her swelling cheek and felt the harshness of Jason's touch.

He had slapped her.

He had lain his hand upon her again and without holding his strength back. She turned, idly, to feel delighted in the face he was making. Jason's anger is the only fuel she needed to resume her wickedness. Medea unequipped her robe, the expression upon her face clearing away what remained of her composed self. This mere satisfaction from earning his ire had driven her quite insane.  
  
And his most loathed Witch took quick steps to spit more painful words at his face.

"HOW DOES IT FEEL?" she questioned him as she glared at him with pleased and insane passion. "TO HAVE MY TEETH IN YOUR HEART?"  
  
And another slap came to greet her skin, this time accompanied with his violent fingers now wrapped around her throat. She once admired how beautiful his hands were. So easy to hold onto things it valued and just as easy to let go of things that were no longer convenient. It coiled so harshly upon her and her back almost shattered the wall she had been pinned against. Raised up in the air, her feet could do nothing but feel the strangeness of being afloat without her consent. He had broken the bones of her spine with his spiteful push, but nothing is more painful than watching him laugh at her, so this is the far better outcome.  
  
"YOU WILL NEVER EVER SPEAK OF GLAUCE AGAIN," he warned her, his teeth visibly grating, shockingly audible even. "Like I do not know the telltale from here. My goody two shoes wife had gotten unbearably familiar with another man. So whoring yourself to the King of Athens was not enough for you? If you hadn't been cursed by Aphrodite to become in love with me, for certain you would spread your legs to every man of the Argo just as much."  
  
Right when she had been forgiven by the Gods she disappointed, once again Medea would fall victim to wrath. She closed her eyes, sorrow leaving her body, only replaced with wrath, and wrath, and wrath all over again.  
  
_Thanatos, Hades, Persephone, Nyx and Circe..._  
_If you hear me, I know greatly of the evil deed I am about to commit._  
_You shall bear witness to the burning skies ahead._  
_How I shall feed these flames with unparalleled scorn._  
  
_In the name of Hecate who had seen in me great possibilities,_  
_And remains sheltered within me._  
_I must once again upset you all,_  
_for Zeus had granted men knowledge to determine fake gold from true,_  
_but never brand a man to warn women that he must be avoided._  
_By Lady Hecate--_  
  
_No man will cast upon me tremendous pain and live long enough to rejoice about it._  
  
A dagger materialized upon her hand, Rule Breaker, all prepared to bring divine judgement upon the world's most traitorous man. What will she do, a soul bitten into with wrong? She will storm the Gods and shake the universe.  
  
And she would have done so if not for his words which followed.  
  
"Even if you are to kill me in this life, I shall come back and meet your new man. Does he know the immoralities which surrounds you? The amount of dead body upon your hands? How you do not blink and how you sleep so peacefully after a murder? Remember this well whenever you ponder about harming me or touching me with your filthy hands. I will always come back. I will come back and remind you again of what you are, and in this life, Medea, I promise you--  
  
That you will never know happiness ever again.  
I will ruin everything you hold dear, as you had proudly done upon me."  
  
Jason, without care for her well-being, released her and in his frustration kicked her by the waist, nothing but a slump of meat in his eyes. She is the reason for his greatest sorrows, and in turn he is behind her every pain. As Medea crumbled upon the ground, holding herself firmly, she began to soundlessly weep-- pain born from his physical assault and mental torment, though the latter was what she continued to lament. Her past mishaps, the cruelty she had acted upon are things she had prepared herself to tell Sir Gawain personally in the days that she had come to appreciate him. If Jason were to take that right from her, she would demand Zeus to strike her once again for dying would be better than this.  
  
From hereon, she must begin to forget him and his warmth.  
He cannot know such crimes from someone else's mouth but hers.  
She will not be able to survive it.  
His eyes which only looked at her with admiration and appreciation--  
If abhorrence were to replace it...  
  
She would...  
She would...  
  
Once again, she had become Jason's slave.


	2. Saudade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medea and Medea Lily had an argument and Jason reprimanded Medea for it. After the confrontation with Jason, Gawain decided to fight Jason and Medea abandoned him for it because he had chosen to battle Jason for the Knight in him would not allow it to go unchallenged instead of leaving with her as she demanded for him to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /souˈdädə/ n.  
A feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia.
> 
> Content warning: Just really really fucking angsty. Self-harm. Post Medea/Gawain break up feels.

How long has she been sitting idly there?  
  
Soulless eyes, dried lips and wrinkled hands. The water drips into her naked form, dousing her skin and concealing her tears. She hasn't stopped crying since. Her lids are swollen, yet she still quietly chokes amidst her trembling form. She could not help but bit her own brim in frustration, dig her own nails and scratch madly against her skin. It all felt icky, as if there was something surrounding her that she could not remove on her person.  
  
It tugged at her like an annoyance which will only disappear should she stop breathing.  
  
She feared this, perhaps more than anyone. When Jason came to Chaldea, he did promise that her happiness will not be everlasting. It will end, as it should, for she is a wicked woman whose nature cannot be changed. Yes, she can be embraced with love and genuine care just by anyone, and she can sleep beside them and pretend her scars and mistakes were nonexistent.

Still, at the end of the day, what she became... what she is now... has never changed. She clings to her past mishaps and claims they still persist in the present as an excuse to shelter herself from everything else that can hurt her again. Just how successful was she in that regard?  
  
Few moments of happiness easily discarded by her because there was something that didn't sit right with her. She expects the world to somehow spin in her favor, to make amends to her, to adjust to her wants this time, for just how long has it harmed her time and time again? Somehow, there should be a moment wherein she's rewarded for everything she was made to endure, but it was stupid. What right did she have to reprimand her younger self for actions they haven't even settled into when she's like this, too, who cannot move forward, does not know how to, does not know when she must? The path to change is ever present, yet the shoes she must wear for this journey is gone and the pavement is spiked and scorching.  
  
Once again, she has created a world wherein she is alone.  
  
The Goddess Aphrodite once again twisting her fate to misfortune. It is justified? She thinks in silence, now embracing her knees closer to her as if it will lessen the pain presently wrenching her heart. This time, possibly, is a result of her own foolishness, not by the Gods. Whether or not she was cursed again to fall into the wrong pit, the only thing that mattered now is that she can never find it in herself to look brightly upon anything. Like before, she wept, and wept, for it was all she could do to quell the grief her broken heart and swollen neck graced her with. Her love, once again, gone. This time, she was not the abandoned one.  
  
And maybe that is why it hurt the most. It stung unlike any other.  
  
Jason abandoned her for another woman.  
Aegeus abandoned her for his own child.  
  
Sir Gawain? He had chosen to stick by his beliefs, as any noble man would. As any man with good intentions would do so. Why would he lay waste upon it, look at her and allow it to be forgotten, all because they shared a bed a couple of times, have exchanged words which made other vows pale in comparison and kissed in the way that Gods would envy them for?  
  
If she was quick to leave such a man who could only look at her with incomparable kindness, adoration, respect and just about anything a woman would prostrate herself to the Gods for, then who was she to announce she is deserving of him? Perhaps there was a part of her that believed Jason to be horrifyingly right. She must learn how to let go of the past and allow people be. That her mistakes did not mean her younger self will endure the same. As she pondered this, she gazed at her hands which could only destroy everything she touched with love. Vengeful. Selfish. Sorrowful.  
  
Gods forbid, but this is all she can be.


End file.
